


Because After Nothing, What Is Left? (A Remix)

by flipflop_diva



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexuality, Established Relationship, Multi, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 02:14:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4503942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When your whole entire world is different, and you yourself aren't even you, how do you possibly move forward?</p>
<p>A continuation of redsnake05's <i>Three dots of nothing in the circle of the world</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Because After Nothing, What Is Left? (A Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redsnake05](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsnake05/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Three dots of nothing in the circle of the world](https://archiveofourown.org/works/101305) by [redsnake05](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsnake05/pseuds/redsnake05). 



> redsnake05, I fell in love with your fic the second I started reading it, and I knew instantly it was the one I wanted to play with. But it was just so good, I couldn't bear to rewrite any of your gorgeous prose, so since the rules said sequels were allowed, that's the direction I went in. I enjoyed your story so much, I wanted to see what came next. I hope you like what I came up with, although it cannot touch the awesomeness of the world you created! Thank you for letting me play with this! It was a blast!

The bitterness faded in time. 

Every day, a little piece of the intense anger chipped away, taking with it the hurt they didn’t talk about and the fear they couldn’t put into words. It couldn’t touch the pangs of emptiness they felt inside, though, the feeling that everything they were and everything they had been and everything they once thought they could have been had been taken away from them without their permission. Friends, gone. Family, gone. Memories. Places they’d been. Conversations they’d had. Things they’d done. All gone. Vanished. Reduced to a book of fairy tales that could never begin to equal the real people behind the myths.

But every day, it was a little bit better than the last.

Harry was the first one to say he understood, to say Dumbledore couldn’t tell them the truth and risk that they wouldn’t have done it. That the good of the world — and from what they had seen, judging by the smile on Molly’s face, it had done good — depended on them.

The man they had all once known and loved, the man who adored Harry and often protected him, that man had given them the book for a reason, had guided them here for a reason. Harry said it was because he knew they would do what was right.

Hermione never said that if Dumbledore had known they would do what was right, then he should have told them the truth and let them choose it for themselves. 

But she did understand that his intentions had been to save the world, not to destroy them, and she thought sometimes she could respect that. 

Because in the end they had what mattered. They had each other. She had Harry’s fingers brushing her arm and Ron’s arm around her and their lips on her temple. She had the knowledge that the love in their eyes as they looked at each other, and as they looked at her, had never faded or changed in the aftermath of the revelation. In fact, it had grown.

She still put soundproof charms on her room at night, and she still laughed when one of her boys stumbled out in the morning missing an essential element of clothing, and sometimes she thought her laugh even sounded real.

She spent a lot of time the first few months learning as much as she could about this new world. She Apparated into London and visited library after library, taking in everything she could of Wizarding history, of Muggle history.

Sometimes when she read books that were light on wars and hardships and famine, she wondered if this existence was real. How could a world end up so perfect, with nothing to fear? If not Voldemort, why not some other threat?

She had spent too much of her early years to ever truly feel comfortable with what had happened. She knew the dangers of playing with time, knew there were always repercussions, and not just repercussions that erased three children from the world.

But she kept her fears to herself, and when the three of them sat outside at night, and felt the warmth in the air, she would hold their hands and smile at them and say that even if no one knew what they done was real, they knew and they should be proud.

It took them almost three months to broach the subject that had been floating in the air since the day they realized the truth — they had seen Molly and they had seen Dumbledore, but what of all the others who had once meant the world to them? Did Lily and James exist, and were they alive? Was Sirius? Did Hermione’s parents have a different little girl who turned out to be a witch or was she a Muggle and the three of them were still blissfully unaware? Did the Weasleys still have six children, a different child who now held Ron’s spot, who played Quidditch with his brothers and made fun of his sister’s relationships?

And what about Hogwarts, the castle they all called home? Was it the same, were the same professors there? How about Luna and Neville, Seamus and Dean, even Draco and Crabbe and Goyle? Was Dobby still the Malfoys’ house elf? Did Hagrid never lose his magic?

It was hard to not be curious, harder still to not be tempted once the words were finally out there, the acknowledgement that they had all thought about it.

Hermione pulled the book of fairy tales out from under her bed the night after they first talked about it and carried her with it outside. She wasn’t sure why, except it was a reminder to them of their empty place in this world.

"‘And they built a house under the trees and lived there for the rest of their lives.’ That’s what it says,” Ron whispered, his hand stroking the back of Harry’s neck but his eyes very obviously trying not to look at the bound parchment in Hermione’s hands.

“It’s a fairy tale,” Hermione answered, always the objective one. That’s who she’d always been in this relationship, who she still was. “It’s not a dictation. We don’t have to do what it says. We can start over, make a new life. People do it all the time.”

“People don’t do this all the time,” Harry said.

“No,” Hermione agreed. “But we don’t have to hide unless we choose to. This book can’t choose where we go from here. It changed once. Maybe it could change again.”

“But do you really want to know?” Ron broke in, and that was the question, wasn’t it? The one they had all been asking themselves, in secret to themselves in the dark of night, and now finally to each other in the light of the moon.

Did they really want to know? Would it make things better to meet the people they still loved who once loved them but now didn’t know them? Or would it hurt too much? Salvage something from the wreckage, even if they had to pretend to be someone else to do it, or just not even attempt it?

Hermione wasn’t sure. She could tell her boys weren’t either.

She put the book on the ground and moved closer into Ron’s open embrace, Harry already lying on his other side. Harry’s hand brushed her fingers as she positioned herself, and Ron sighed sadly.

“We have time,” Harry said.

_So much time,_ Hermione didn’t say. Instead, she just nodded. “Yes,” she said. “We can decide tomorrow.”


End file.
